Friday, July 18, 2014

"Feels Like" -124F

We went out to celebrate my youngest son's birthday at a local restaurant called the Turtle Club. As you may guess, they have quite the collection of decorative turtles. I think that they have one of the best salad bars in town and really, I should've called it quits after that as most of my dinner came home in a box. No bike related things going on but it was nice and sunny until around 1:00pm when the rain started up again. June brought record breaking rainfall and July is almost another record. Just the normal commute and some running errands around town. The trunk on the Ural is extremely convenient for storing my helmet or the Roadcrafter but not both.

Maybe it's a requirement for being a Ural or Airhead owner but I always feel compelled to go to the garage and work on something. This weekend, I'm thinking or taking the Cozy off of the Beemer for the rest of the summer. I'll need to change the rear tire but I still have the Shinko that I picked up in Corvallis a couple of years ago. It shouldn't take me that long to swap it out.

While browsing on the Internet this afternoon, I ran across this weather page for Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. For anyone thinking of complaining of their local weather I should send them the link. -90°F without wind chill and "feels like" -124°F. I'm not sure I ever want to know what that feels like. N.B. The wind speed was only 8mph.

Which reminds me that I need to put an outlet for the Gerbings somewhere on the Ural. Last Tuesday it was cold enough to need the liner with morning temperatures below 40°F and raining. Not for my short commute but all the running around that occured during the day.

 

8 comments:

  1. Happy Birthday to young son!!

    It will be interesting for us to see and for you to feel the RT w/o the sidecar again. Just thinking about -Infinity degrees is enough to cool off a hot, humid day for me.

    Hope your 'forced' garage time yields positive results. :)

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    1. We'll see how it goes as I hadn't been on two wheels for quite a while. Last July at the MOA rally riding demo bikes that I'll probably never buy...

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  2. Wow, the south pole makes Barrow seem like the Bahamas.

    And Happy Birthday to your son. The salad bar sounds lovely. We don't really have one in town.

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    1. Barrow is warmer than Fairbanks during the winter and a lot warmer than the South Pole. I think their record all time high temperature is something like +4 °F.

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  3. I think you should do a quick cylinder change on the Ural just to get in some practice. If my Vespa isn't perfect I shall call myself a Uralista emeritus and I too will have to tinker. That's shy the restoration is taking too long!

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    1. Just a cylinder swap from one side to the other to balance out wear? And all this time I haven't been doing that with the Beemer. Looking forward to hearing how the Vespa restoration is doing. I'm still thinking that the Ural may be running on the lean side.

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  4. Richard:

    Happy Birthday to your son too. I wonder how you're going to adapt to leaning on 2 wheels. Without the Cozy it's going to feel like a sports car.

    bob
    Riding the Wet Coast

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    1. See my next post. The Beemer feels like a completely different bike without the Cozy. I had forgotten what it was like. And really fast...

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